Читать книгу The only reason why you don`t own Bitcoin is that you don`t know enough about it… - - Страница 4

«Bitcoin is fundamentally a mathematical concept, but its relationship to the physical world is very different from its relationship to the world of other mathematical concepts because most can be visualized, like Pythagoras’ theorem!

Fig.2 Pythagoras’ Theorem

It is enough to draw a square from each face of a triangle to understand it to see that the hypotenuse length square is equal to the sum of the catheter’s length squares (Fig.2). In turn, all the concepts embedded in Bitcoin can be represented quite easily in the form of graphs and sketches. I think you’ve seen them dozens of times. However, bitcoin has another layer that is much harder to realize — its connection to reality and value.

«Value» is a pretty odd concept because while it is actual, it is also completely subjective. For some collectors, a worn-out banknote will be extremely valuable, but at the same time, it is just a piece of paper, a relic of the past for an ordinary person. That is why there is no ruler or scale to measure value. Most sites trying to express the value of Bitcoin use the US dollar as the unit of value, and this is wrong. The US dollar is a poor tool for measuring value because no one knows how much there really is or how much there will be in the future, which is even more critical. Our current viral global crisis, with its 99.9 percent survival rate, has caused the world’s money printers to run at an unprecedented ratio, and the dollar’s value relative to commodities is slowly fading. So, what is a fair way to measure Bitcoin’s value?

Measuring value

Imagine two people stranded on a desert island. Let’s call them Robin and Tom. They have one Bitcoin each and no way to acquire more. In other words, these two bitcoins are metaphors for the entire economy. Tom and Robin know that only two coins are circulating on the island. Robin knows how to fish with his bare hands, and Tom knows how to chase and catch rabbits. They exchange fish and rabbits with each other, which are consumer goods.

Sometimes, they use their bitcoins as a medium of exchange if there is a shortage of fish or rabbits. One day, Robin crafted a net. He now catches many more fish per hour, giving him an advantage over Tom, who has to invent a spear to capture rabbits as efficiently as Robin catches fish.

The net and the spear are capital goods, and they benefit the island’s entire economy, as fish and rabbits are now cheaper to produce and buy. There are still only two bitcoins in the economy. While before the net and spear, these bitcoins could be used as a means of accumulation and exchange, now the value of the capital assets (the net and spear) are also part of the economy. In other words, one bitcoin can now buy many more fish or rabbits than before. To put it even more simply, every time Tom and Robin invent new ways of extracting sustenance, bitcoin increases in value, and that’s because bitcoin is finite, as there can’t be more than two coins on an island.

So far, people are doing just that. Volatility (price fluctuations) is proof of that. In the future, there will come a point when no one will sell bitcoins at a loss because everyone will realize that it is pointless to do so. That’s when things will change dramatically.

In reality, there are only 21 million coins, and imagine how small that is compared to the same dollars printed in trillions of banknotes. Imagine the entire world economy soon switching to Bitcoin. Absolutely any commodity, any currency, all divided into twenty-one million coins. One bitcoin by itself will have enormous value, and every time people invent and introduce new capital goods into this economy, each bitcoin will have even more worth.

It is much easier for a new capital good to enter the Bitcoin economy than to join the conventional economy because the power of a completely unrestricted free market is the best gas pedal of human ingenuity.

But let’s take a step back and consider a different concept, one in which information itself is literally valuable.

Value of information

I think it’s no secret that having a lot of information about an event has always been considered valuable. Information is inherently the resolution of uncertainty. I believe everyone would be willing to pay if we came across a newspaper from the future in 2009 that said Bitcoin would be worth tens of thousands of dollars. It is valuable information that would make you a millionaire.

The smallest unit of information is called a bit. It is a simple «Yes» or «No» answer. A single bit can be valuable, representing the answer to a specific question, such as whether a game is rigged in a player’s favor. If you know the answer to this binary question, a successful bet can bring you a generous reward.

This kind of information has an indirect value, but with the advent of Bitcoin, information has literally become valuable. Let me say right away that this is a very abstract concept, and it is rather complicated to realize its meaning.

You may have heard the saying, «Not your keys, not your bitcoins,» meaning that possessing the private keys to a particular Bitcoin address means owning those bitcoins. In Bitcoin, there is no difference between knowledge and possession.

Indirectly valuable information can be converted into something valued in various ways, such as betting on player «A» if you know he will win. When information becomes an asset – money becomes a language. Information and money are the two core tools driving communication and interaction in the modern economic system. It will test every free speech law in the world because you can now claim ownership through communication in a way that has never been possible before. The boundaries between knowledge and possession are now forever blurred. The world will never be the same again.

Communication has always been the key to progress. But now, it has become the key to the opportunities opened up by an innovation called Bitcoin, and the potential wealth lurking in this territory is simply incomprehensible.

Combining concepts

Now, let’s combine these two concepts into one – a finite set of tokens representing a potentially infinite future economy where tokens are nothing more than simple information transferred between people anywhere in the world.

The invention of Bitcoin is more significant than anything imaginable because it can move humanity in a matter of years to a Type 2 civilization on the Kardashev scale, where the most tradable and most valuable commodity exists, not subject to confiscation. Where will this lead to? When you can’t know who has what amount of a resource, you can’t take it away. End Violence and war, and there is no way to enrich yourself except by offering something of value in return! It is impossible to realize the significance of this.

At this point, humanity can be compared to cave trolls trying to imagine Boston Dynamics.

Central banks are and always have been a heinous crime against all of humanity, a war crime, if I may say so.

Thanks to Bitcoin, everyone can free themselves from oppression and bypass unjust economic systems by destroying their weapons. After all, in a world with a finite and infinitely valuable resource, uncontrolled printing of currencies becomes useless because no one needs those currencies anymore.

Bitcoin balances our understanding of the world between the material and the imaginary even more than we realize. That makes it rewarding. As Niels Bohr said, «If quantum mechanics doesn’t seem weird and lousy to you from the start, then you haven’t understood it yet.» The same can be said for bitcoin. The main thing you need to realize right now is that Bitcoin already exists and is gaining more and more momentum. There is no way out of the rabbit hole, and it seems bottomless, but daring to go down is the best thing you can do with your time.

Bitcoin is a tool for maximizing personal sovereignty and freedom, and bitcoiners are your brothers and sisters in arms who want the best for themselves and encourage you, in turn, to want the best for yourself. Bitcoin is not controlled by central banks or governments, and that’s fine.